Day: July 29, 2008

“i am a lady and i like to do ladies’ things”

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Part 2 of my SF weekend: I wanted to go and draw things in San Francisco that I hadn’t drawn before, and I’d never been to Alamo Square, but had seen it on so many postcards.

painted ladies

I spent a while up there, enjoying the incredible view and finally drawing some of the painted ladies, those big, um, (victorian, edwardian, i don’t know) houses. I’d taken a bus over to Fillmore, stopping by Japantown on the way, and walking down through the historic jazz part of town to get there. As it was my second drawing there I decided to add colour later, so the black and white version is below. Incredible sunshine, but (even with reapplying sunscreen and travelling in shadows as much as possible) I got a bit burnt. Bugger; always seems to happen to me in San Francisco, but never in oven-hot Davis. Took the 22 out to sketch the bridge after this (go back to part 1).

unpainted ladies

These are the unpainted ladies.

two from the top and four small ones please

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there's only one keano

You might think the title should be “little green bag”, but since the bag is blue in real life, I’ve gone for a vorderman reference.

This is my my trusty blue shoulder bag, in which i carry my sketchbook and pencil case, along with something else to write in or perhaps read, everywhere i go. It’s from eddie bauer and has a million pockets; it’s the perfect size. I keep my little waterbottle in one of the side pockets, several other useful items like clips and tissue and business cards and bus schedules to sacramento litter the other pockets. I’ve had such bags before (all bought from one store in Aix-en-Provence), all sketchbook sized and convenient, but never with this many pockets. Drawn in olive green copic 0.1.

And Americans may not know what I’m talking about in this one, so let me explain. Robbie Keane, my favourite footballer (that’s soccerer to you), has left my club Spurs and joined Liverpool, who he supported as a boy. I am gutted, gutted, but I don’t blame Keane, I’m pleased for him; if I played for Liverpool and Spurs came in for me, I’d go yesterday. It’s just, we Spurs fans, all we really wanted was a team of Robbie Keanes. We sold Defoe, the ‘too many strikers’ excuse. Berbatov will go anyway. We’re left with Darren Bent.  

And Vorderman leaving Countdown!!! (I wonder how many google searches of ‘vorderman’ and ‘countdown’ will end up here now? I had bloody ‘ars*nal sketchbook’ direct here last week, i’m not happy about that) It’s a world gone mental. I don’t know how to correctly write those last few beats of the countdown music, but imagine them in your head now for vorderman:

dun-uh, dun-uh, dun-uh-nuh-nuh.